Brain injury survivor gives back, doesn't give up

Michael Coss holds photos of his two greatest inspirations, his six-year-old twins Nathan and Danielle, at his Langley group home. Coss, a former Molson salesman who was injured in an accident, is the Courage to Come Back recipient in the physical rehab category.Les Bazso
/ PNG

Doctors thought Michael Coss was going to be a bed-ridden invalid after an accident in 2006 left him with traumatic brain injury. But Coss has defied the odds, completing 2.5 km in the 10-kilometre Sun Run with a cane and walking one kilometre in the Terry Fox run.Les Bazso
/ PNG

This is the fifth of six profiles on recipients of the 2012 Courage to Come Back Awards, presented by Coast Mental Health to six outstanding people who have overcome great obstacles only to give back to their communities. Their inspiring comebacks will be celebrated at a gala dinner in the Vancouver Trade and Convention Centre on May 17.

Six years after a traumatic brain injury ended Michael Coss’s career in sales with Molson’s, he is still closing the deal, wrapping up an interview with an assertive but friendly: “What can I do to put some meat on this story for you?”

It’s not hard to see why before his accident the former sales rep had been promoted to oversee field marketers for the brewery or why he won the Courage to Come Back award for physical rehabilitation.

“I had just been promoted, I was married and had not one but two beautiful six-month-old babies, and we had just bought our dream home where we were going to raise our family,” said Coss, 43, in the tasteful and bright living room of the six-bedroom home he shares with other TBI survivors on a quiet Langley street.

“I was on Cloud 9!” he said with typical exuberance. “I was living life in the fast lane.”

Coss said he lived by his motto: “Be No. 1 or be home by one.”

“I was never home by one,” he said with the loud, easy laugh that telegraphs the punchlines of his many jokes.

He also played hard. He became a pilot before his accident and from childhood was an all-around natural athlete, playing hockey, golf, baseball and soccer.

As he put it: “If there was a sport and Michael Coss wasn’t playing it, there was a reason why.”

That all ended the morning of May 18, 2006. He was travelling with his wife and twin son and daughter to Kelowna for the Coors Light Maxim golf event when he lost control of the vehicle.

He was airlifted to hospital and spent almost seven months in a coma, able only to move one pinky finger.

His wife, parents and two younger brothers were told to prepare for a lifetime of caring for a bed-ridden invalid in a long-term care unit.

“The doctors said I would never speak, eat or walk again,” he said.

When rehab specialist Eric Fielder assessed Coss in 2007 at the group home for B.C.’s most severely disabled, “his injury and disability were so severe, so debilitating that he said Coss would likely remain at a reduced mental and functional capacity forever,” he wrote in a nominating letter.

Dr. Rajiv Reebye, who was asked in 2009 to treat Coss’s severe spasticity, wrote in his letter, he “did not feel that (Coss) would be able to walk and would remain at the extended care level.... He has become an inspiration to myself, my patients and my medical colleagues.”

“I had to relearn how to eat, to bathe, to dress myself,” Coss said without a trace of self-pity. “I’m learning how to walk at 43.”

And he’s doing well. Last month Coss completed 2.5 km in the 10K Sun Run, with the help of only a cane, in 2:33. Last fall, he walked one kilometre in the Terry Fox 10K run.

“So next year, I’ll be doing the Vancouver marathon,” he joked.

Coss gets serious and emotional when he talks about his biggest motivator.

“I want to be able to walk hand-in-hand to the park with my kids,” he said of six-year-old Nathan and Danielle.

Coss’s busy schedule includes includes horseback riding, “great for my core strength,” warm water physio, workouts, rehab sessions with robotic walking aids and weekly speech therapy, which is helping him “big time” to speak again. He also gets oxygen sessions in the hyperbaric chamber.

Coss took a workshop on how to write a book in 90 days and three years later published a book, coincidentally called the Courage to Come Back, typing it with one finger.

And after taking a stand-up comedy workshop, he wrote and performed his jokes in public, including in front of a standing ovation from 600 people at the Stanley Theatre.

He joked he’s a “sit-down comedian” and that his “brain injury diet” helped him shed 60 pounds and somehow grow an inch from his earlier five-foot-ten, 220-lb. frame.

Coss credits his progress to his strong-willed drive to succeed.

“I was very competitive in sports,” he said. “I’m always taking things to the next level.”

He’s separated but remains “best of friends” with his ex-wife, dining at her home with her and the twins every Sunday.

“I’m very much a part of their lives,” he said. “I think this (injury) has made me a better father and makes me slow down and feel the full affects of living. (Before the accident) I was living life in the fast lane. I’m a better person now.”

One of the first things Coss asked, just months out of the coma, was how he could raise money for the physically disabled. He went on to raise a record-setting $25,000 for the Rick Hansen Foundation and $5,000 for the Terry Fox Foundation.

And he formed the Michael Coss Brain Injury Foundation to pay for hyperbaric chamber treatments for children with TBI, and has mentored countless TBI survivors and gives inspirational talks.

“I think that I was put on this Earth to inspire others to the best they can be in their own situation,” he said. “I would not change the life I have now for anything. I would not want to re-play the cards to have a different outcome.

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